Unable to get RX Vega working with High Sierra

[dashingncool]

I was able to successfully install and log into High Sierra with nvidia GTX960 (of course the web drivers were missing). So I decided to go with RX Vega because I read in a multiple places that it works out of the box.

However, when I start my hack, I can see the boot logs etc. Then the pointer appears for a second with a tiny weird screen in the background which is sometimes blue, or green or multicolored as if the gpu was running with very small memory. Can some one help me?

 

[dashingncool]

You've probably got some stuff from the Nvidia card in your config.plist.
Check your kexts to make sure you don't have any Nvidia related stuff, check your config.plist and remove any graphics flags or patches. I need npci=0x02000 , don't inject Intel or ATI or NVidia.

THANKS! Removing all the nvidia flags did show one monitor. However, I now have 2 problems:

1. The vega gets overloaded (all the leds turn red) as soon as I launch opera or chrome browser. I can't even turn off the hardware acceleration because opening preferences just freezes the system. I can't say which other apps are behaving like this. But I can consistently reproduce this. This is an Opera problem. I could not reproduce it on chrome or safari or firefox (I thought it was chrome as well but I guess some how opera was also running last time I tried)

2. I can't get the 2nd monitor working.

Any thoughts?

 

[blueshadow869]

THANKS! Removing all the nvidia flags did show one monitor. However, I now have 2 problems:

1. The vega gets overloaded (all the leds turn red) as soon as I launch opera or chrome browser. I can't even turn off the hardware acceleration because opening preferences just freezes the system. I can't say which other apps are behaving like this. But I can consistently reproduce this. This is an Opera problem. I could not reproduce it on chrome or safari or firefox (I thought it was chrome as well but I guess some how opera was also running last time I tried)

2. I can't get the 2nd monitor working.

Any thoughts?

I am having something similar happening can you run the heaven or valley benchmark from uniengine and see if it looks normal? Mine looks all garbled I think somehow the gpu acceleration isn't working 100%, it feels like a driver issue.

 

[dashingncool]

Yes, the driver isn't perfect, or even that good yet.
With Heaven, you need to turn off anti-aliasing.

So I can't get the dual monitors? It seems like only 1 DP is working on Vega. The other two show pointer but nothing else.

@Gigamaxx, would you happen to know what are we missing with RX Vega? The card is fantastic and works OOB but its not perfect as some of the videos on youtube claim.

 

[blueshadow869]

Yes, the driver isn't perfect, or even that good yet.
With Heaven, you need to turn off anti-aliasing.

That was totally it! My Chrome is crashing when I run it with hardware acceleration, if I disable anti-aliasing through Settings --> General --> Use LCD font smoothing when available will that fix the Chrome issue, Safari doesn't have the issue at all, wonder if you're seeing this? Thanks!

 

[arjunchawda]

Just to chime in, I've got a z270 board from gigabyte, 32gb ram, 7700k, Vega 64 and installed high Sierra. Chrome crashing osx, and sometimes entirely freezing. I thought it was just high Sierra at first, then noticed whenever I go into chrome's history, my system would freeze and sometimes stay frozen, and other times it would crash and log me out. I noticed the LEDs on the Vega would all be lit when this freeze or crash would happen.

This happens every time I go into chrome's history. Google notes app randomly quits at times for me, and logic X unexpectedly quit when I was editing some preferences.

I *think* it's all Vega related.

 

[blueshadow869]

Just to chime in, I've got a z270 board from gigabyte, 32gb ram, 7700k, Vega 64 and installed high Sierra. Chrome crashing osx, and sometimes entirely freezing. I thought it was just high Sierra at first, then noticed whenever I go into chrome's history, my system would freeze and sometimes stay frozen, and other times it would crash and log me out. I noticed the LEDs on the Vega would all be lit when this freeze or crash would happen.

This happens every time I go into chrome's history. Google notes app randomly quits at times for me, and logic X unexpectedly quit when I was editing some preferences.

I *think* it's all Vega related.

Okay good, me too, I shut off hardware acceleration in Chrome and it works fine, it's for sure at the webkit level, because apps like Slack and other Electron based software also cause crashes. Now the question is does this get better? I turned off antialiasing in the OS settings and Chrome still crashes, also I am on an LG 5k monitor and I do get full 5k which is cool, but the colors are washed out compared to my Macbook Pro so this all seems driver related to me.

 

[bub505]

I'm wondering if the Chrome issues wouldn't be linked to use of OpenGL.
When Chome crashed, I also have the LEDs all lit up, but the fan never reaches full speed (as it does in Windows benchmarks).

I noticed that Chrome would freeze whenever I tried to associate my google account to the browser (during the authentication process).
Other websites ran fine though.

I've since disabled hardware acceleration as mentioned by shaunc869 above.
Haven't had a crash running Chrome since - close to a week now.

If I remember correctly, when I ran CineBench in OpenGL mode, only maybe 2-3 leds on the card lit up, and I got very low results.

At this point it would really seem as though current HS builds only include marginal support for RX Vega GPUs, at least where it comes to OpenGL (OpenCL performance was about on-par for what can be expected).

Given the new iMac Pro - which will be the first to require support for the RX Vega architecture - will launch in Dec, I guess updated drivers will be included in upcoming HS patches. Just hope it'll be sooner rather than later ;-)

(running the GM release currently)

 

[arjunchawda]

Ok, cool. I'm pretty confident this is driver related too. Which is good, as it WILL be rectified. Vega will be supported further.

Just out of interest, do you have issues with your machine not actually shutting down?

After I click shutdown, my machine appears to turn off, but if I click my mouse or press a key on the keyboard, the machine boots up again.

BIOS wake is not enabled.

 

[arjunchawda]

@bub505
That makes sense for partial Vega support atm. I also hope it's sooner rather than later that we get complete driver support.